I went to a juggling convention last weekend in madison. My friend peter was in from the netherlands, and seemed to have a good time even though he doesn’t juggle or unicycle. He even bought three balls before he left, and a festival t-shirt!
I’m back out in the “dating” world, and damn does it suck. I love meeting and getting to know new people, but I hate the in-between stage immediately following getting to know them, when you don’t know if you should be balls out in love with someone or if that’s just going to scare them away. OK, I guess the real news is that Katie and I passed through that stage, and it pretty much scared her away. I’m over it mostly, but I still get pissed off when I think about how she never seems interested in hanging out anymore.
I was going to write a whole bunch more, mostly about how i feel really needy and clingy today, but instead I’m going over to mike’s place to finish a puzzle and maybe watch a movie or something. But first, about the needy and clingy thing… I guess the crux of it was that I wanted to talk about how I am totally a codependent person in most of my relationships, and how I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I’m flailing around feeling all lonely, and of course it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t feel that way. Maybe I should just try and get along by myself for a while.
But here’s my response to that: Fuck it. Fuck that. Fuck being independent. We’re social creatures! Without friends, I’d have blown my brains out long ago. (OK, maybe family had something to do with that too, but I’m serious when I say this.) Without people to share this meaningless existence with, I honestly wonder whether it would be worth it. (Of course, I have no way of knowing if that statement is true, because I have a great network of wonderful friends.) Anyway, I WANT to be codependent. I want to get back to that place with someone. I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but I realized this afternoon that it’s not about kids, it’s not about being a grown up, it’s not about laying in bed together planning our futures… it’s about trusting someone to be there, and leaning on them, depending on them, for the things that matter. I want that, most of the time, way more than I want to be dating people. Nuff said.
[Note, some of the beginning of this post was excerpted from a myspace message to an old friend. Hearing from him was unexpected and cool.]
[Note II: I meant co-dependence here in the sense that i am dependent on my partner, and they are (hopefully) dependent on me. The popular “addiction enabler” definition of the term “codependnet” is not at all what i was getting at, and it was brought to my attention that I might have meant that here. I did not want or mean to add that connotation, and I hope this clears up any confusion. Thanks. (added 01-27-2006)]